Eugenia Moche
Namibia’s N$245 million smart-city grant from China has raised concerns about whether the country has enforceable sovereign safeguards, or if a hidden agenda is buried in the agreement.
IPC shadow minister of international relations and trade, Rodney Cloete, told the Windhoek Observer that it could bind the country to decades of technological dependence.
Cloete highlighted that the danger lies not in the size of the grant but in the systems, data, and dependency attached to it.
“A free installation can produce thirty years of paid dependence,” he said, warning that Namibia could remain reliant on a single provider for software licences, cloud services, maintenance, and cybersecurity.
He added that while N$1 700 a month, it equals one month’s old-age grant for 144 000 pensioners, accounting for nearly two-thirds of Namibia’s pensioners in total.
“We are being invited to treat as a rounding error, a sum that would feed two-thirds of our grandmothers for a month,” he said.
About the grant, Cloete stated that “a gift you cannot audit is not a gift; it is a lien.”
He added that assistance which creates hidden obligations or technical dependence is not an unconditional gift.
“A genuine public grant should be capable of being audited,” he said, calling for full disclosure of the agreements, annexures, contractors, data architecture, and lifetime operating costs.
He further said that the satellite ground-data receiving station handed over in February 2026 at the Telecom Earth Station outside Windhoek receives remote-sensing data from the CBERS-4 satellite and is operated by fourteen trained Namibians.
Cloete acknowledged that both projects carry developmental value but cautioned about what can happen when these systems are connected.
“Earth observation tells you where things are. A smart-city tells you who moves through them, when, in which vehicle, through which gate,” he said.
Another concern he raised was the absence of clear authority over citizen data. He explained that Namibia has no data protection statute, meaning there is no legal definition of a data controller or rules governing cross-border transfers.
“Article 13 of the Constitution protects privacy, but a constitutional right without an enabling statute means a pensioner must fund her own High Court application to vindicate it. That is not a safeguard. It is a lottery ticket,” he said.
He also noted that foreign laws, such as China’s National Intelligence Law, cannot be switched off by Namibian contracts, highlighting the need for enforceable local clauses. “Friendship is not a control. A clause is a control,” he said.
Cloete urged parliament to compel disclosure of the agreements, hold public hearings, commission independent security assessments, and pass a rights-respecting Data Protection Act. “Build the law, then build the city. Doing it in the other order means the contract writes the law,” he said.
He added that the issues raised are not opposition to China or technology because the country needs investment and modern infrastructure and should cooperate with any partner where cooperation advances Namibia’s development, but the absence of sovereign safeguards.
“Digital development without democratic control is not sovereignty. It is dependency,” he said.
As Namibia prepares to enter the smart-city era, he insists that transparency and enforceable protections must come first, and that the government must explain, for each instrument, whether it is a treaty, a grant agreement, a memorandum, a commercial contract, or a political commitment, and whether it requires ratification.
“Citizens cannot hold a government accountable for obligations they are not permitted to see,” Cloete added.
